To standardize input methods for selecting Chinese characters in mobile devices, the Chinese Government has promulgated a national standard, GB18031, for inputting Chinese characters, and a national standard GB18030 specifying available Chinese characters. Under the GB18031 standard, a numeric keypad of a mobile device has a set of predefined keys from 1 through 5, each of which has a particular Chinese character stroke associated with it. To select a desired Chinese character from the available Chinese characters, one or more of the GB18031 standard predefined numeric keys 1 through 5 are sequentially pressed and the corresponding strokes are entered. A set of Chinese characters matching the entered sequence of strokes is progressively narrowed after each stroke entry. The desired Chinese character is finally selected when a sufficient number of strokes to define the desired Chinese character has been entered such that the set of Chinese characters matching the entered strokes is small enough for a user to easily select the desired Chinese character. Although, the predefined numeric keys 1 through 5 of the GB18031 standard are adequate in selecting a desired Chinese character from the available Chinese characters, it requires multiple key strokes, each of which provides a single corresponding Chinese character stroke, to narrow candidate Chinese characters matching the entered stroke sequence sufficient enough such that a user can finally select the desired Chinese character.